IBM PS/2 releases

* AIX PS/2 v1.3, October 1992 ** Withdrawn from sale in US, March 1995 ** Patches supporting IBM ThinkPad 750C family of notebook computers, 1994 ** Patches supporting non PS/2 hardware and systems, 1993 * AIX PS/2 v1.2.1, May 1991 * AIX PS/2 v1.2, March 1990 * AIX PS/2 v1.1, March 1989

IBM RT releases

* AIX RT v2.2.1, March 1991 * AIX RT v2.2, March 1990 * AIX RT v2.1, March 1989 ** X-Windows included on installation media * AIX RT v1.1, 1986 * AIX RT v1.0, 1985

User interfaces

The default shell was

Bourne shell The Bourne shell (sh) is a shell command-line interpreter for computer operating systems. It first appeared on Version 7 Unix, as its default shell. Unix-like systems continue to have /bin/sh—which will be the Bourne shell, or a symbolic lin ...

up to AIX version 3, and

KornShell KornShell (ksh) is a Unix shell which was developed by David Korn (computer scientist), David Korn at Bell Labs in the early 1980s and announced at USENIX Annual Technical Conference, USENIX on July 14, 1983. The initial development was base ...

(ksh88) in version 4 for XPG4 and

POSIX The Portable Operating System Interface (POSIX; ) is a family of standards specified by the IEEE Computer Society for maintaining compatibility between operating systems. POSIX defines application programming interfaces (APIs), along with comm ...

compliance.

Graphical

The

Common Desktop Environment The Common Desktop Environment (CDE) is a desktop environment for Unix and OpenVMS, based on the Motif (software), Motif widget toolkit. It was part of the UNIX 98, UNIX 98 Workstation Product Standard, and was for a long time the Unix desktop a ...

(CDE) is AIX's default

graphical user interface A graphical user interface, or GUI, is a form of user interface that allows user (computing), users to human–computer interaction, interact with electronic devices through Graphics, graphical icon (computing), icons and visual indicators such ...

. As part of Linux Affinity and the free AIX Toolbox for Linux Applications (ATLA), open-source

KDE KDE is an international free software community that develops free and open-source software. As a central development hub, it provides tools and resources that enable collaborative work on its projects. Its products include the KDE Plasma gra ...

and

GNOME A gnome () is a mythological creature and diminutive spirit in Renaissance magic and alchemy, introduced by Paracelsus in the 16th century and widely adopted by authors, including those of modern fantasy literature. They are typically depict ...

desktops are also available.

System Management Interface Tool

SMIT is the System Management Interface Tool for AIX. It allows a user to navigate a menu hierarchy of commands, rather than using the command line. Invocation is typically achieved with the command smit. Experienced system administrators make use of the F6 function key which generates the command line that SMIT will invoke to complete it. SMIT also generates a log of commands that are performed in the smit.script file. The smit.script file automatically records the commands with the command flags and parameters used. The smit.script file can be used as an executable shell script to rerun system configuration tasks. SMIT also creates the smit.log file, which contains additional detailed information that can be used by programmers in extending the SMIT system. smit and smitty refer to the same program, though smitty invokes the text-based version, while smit will invoke an X Window System based interface if possible; however, if smit determines that X Window System capabilities are not present, it will present the text-based version instead of failing. Determination of X Window System capabilities is typically performed by checking for the existence of the DISPLAY variable.

Database

Object Data Manager (ODM) is a database of system information integrated into AIX, analogous to the registry in

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

. A good understanding of the ODM is essential for managing AIX systems. Data managed in ODM is stored and maintained as objects with associated attributes. Interaction with ODM is possible via

application programming interface An application programming interface (API) is a connection between computers or between computer programs. It is a type of software Interface (computing), interface, offering a service to other pieces of software. A document or standard that des ...

(API)

library A library is a collection of Book, books, and possibly other Document, materials and Media (communication), media, that is accessible for use by its members and members of allied institutions. Libraries provide physical (hard copies) or electron ...

for programs, and command-line utilities such as ''odmshow'', ''odmget'', ''odmadd'', ''odmchange'' and ''odmdelete'' for

shell script A shell script is a computer program designed to be run by a Unix shell, a command-line interpreter. The various dialects of shell scripts are considered to be command languages. Typical operations performed by shell scripts include file manipu ...

s and users. SMIT and its associated AIX commands can also be used to query and modify information in the ODM. ODM is stored on disk using

Berkeley DB Berkeley DB (BDB) is an embedded database software library for key/value data, historically significant in open-source software. Berkeley DB is written in C with API bindings for many other programming languages. BDB stores arbitrary key/data ...

files. Example of information stored in the ODM database are: * Network configuration *

Logical volume management In computer storage, logical volume management or LVM provides a method of allocating space on mass-storage devices that is more flexible than conventional partitioning schemes to store volumes. In particular, a volume manager can concatenate, ...

configuration *Installed software information *Information for logical devices or

software driver In the context of an operating system, a device driver is a computer program that operates or controls a particular type of device that is attached to a computer or automaton. A driver provides a software interface to hardware devices, enabli ...

s *List of all AIX supported devices *Physical hardware devices installed and their configuration *Menus, screens and commands that SMIT uses

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Aix IBM AIX Power ISA operating systems PowerPC operating systems

IBM Aix AIX (pronounced ) is a series of Proprietary software, proprietary Unix operating systems developed and sold by IBM since 1986. The name stands for "Advanced Interactive eXecutive". Current versions are designed to work with Power ISA based ...

Object-oriented database management systems 1986 software X86 operating systems